Those things were all true. They were what needed to go into the letter. But they weren’t the lasting effects of the incident. The lasting effects of the incident started with Mr. Stewy Upton nominating me as a stand-in for Alexis Ahern.
“Here, Mom. It’s done.” I handed her the letter. She read it and reread it and smiled, which seemed inappropriate.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Because you laid it on thick, and I think it’s going to influence the judge to get that bastard in the balls.”
“Weird, Mom. You’ve been hanging around Dad too long.”
My mother got out her meticulous file of bruise photos, a rainbow of ugly Sadie faces and monster tail poses.
“Gross, Mom.”
“We’re not entering a beauty pageant, are we?” She got her phone off the counter. “One more for luck.”
We went out to the garden, where the hydrangeas were browning a bit and the chill had killed the daylilies. “Don’t move.” I held my hair away from the monster tail and Mom took too many pictures.
I didn’t want to look, but I did. It was there, as it always would be, curled and trying to look cute. It had gotten slightly lighter, more flesh-toned. “Better than it was, honey,” she said. “And after all that complaining, you’re done. Remember that when I suggest you get going on the college applications.”
“Will do, Mom.”
I was in the mood to clean my room and purge my summer shit and get ready for school. I stood in the doorway, staring at the origami cranes hanging haphazardly from corner to corner. In one long tug, I pulled them down.
Every last one.
THIRTY
GRANDMA SULLIVAN WAS fine creeping around the neighborhood in her Toyota Avalon in daytime, but after sunset she was all squints and panic. I can’t see! I can’t see, damn it!
“Take Grandma to get the lotto tickets,” Mom said, giving me the I have a migraine sign.
I was in the middle of a virtual tour of Pepperdine with Shay and her very awesome roomie Eleanor from Detroit. The other two roommates were book troll gadflies, but Shay and Eleanor from Detroit were two sweet peas in a pod with their friendliness and unending quest for fun. Shay had left the hellish tennis camp behind her and was starting anew.
“Here comes the sun,” I sang.
“What?” Shay said.
“She’s singing the Beatles,” Eleanor said. And I liked her even more.
Even though Grandma Sullivan couldn’t see at night, she was still perfectly capable of backseat driving all the way to the convenience store so we could buy her lotto tickets.
“Turn left up ahead. It’s a shortcut,” she said.
“I’m going the way I like to go,” I said.
I waited in the car for a while and finally decided to go into the store to see what was taking her so long. That was when I literally collided with Seth and D-Bag. It took me a couple seconds to process Seth’s grinning face. I almost turned and ran away. Then I saw D-Bag’s T-shirt.
“Speak of the devil. We were just talking about you.”
I ignored Seth and stepped in front of D-Bag. “Where did you get that T-shirt?”
“This? It’s the Unlikelies. Have you been living under a rock?”
“I know what it is. Where did you get the T-shirt?”
“Online.”
I couldn’t believe D-Bag was standing in a convenience store, holding a Red Bull and wearing a T-shirt with our five masked Civil War soldiers, our avatar printed on the front.
I shook my head and started to walk away.
Seth grabbed my arm. “You’re that bitter? You can’t even say hi?”
I took a deep breath. “Hi, Seth. How was your summer?” I said with my sweetest Sadie Cakes voice. I stared at the T-shirt. Some self-serving online loser was making money off our movement.
“It was good. I’m just packing for college. I guess you were too busy with Gordie Harris to answer my texts.”
“I’m sorry, Seth. I really, truly hope you have the best four years of your life.” I reached up and gave him an awkward hug. “I have to go.”
I left the store and fumbled with the Prius keys. Grandma Sullivan was already in the backseat. The last thing I wanted to do was cry in front of my grandmother, but I couldn’t help it.
“What’s wrong, Sadie?”
I reached for the tissue box. “Nothing, Grandma. I was just freaked out to see Seth.”
“The new guy is better looking. You can tell Seth will be bald by the time he’s twenty-five. Good riddance.”
That was Grandma Sullivan’s best attempt at consoling me.
“Thanks, Grandma.”
“Don’t waste any more tears on that slob.”
But the tears weren’t over Seth. They were tears of rage. The Unlikelies was our thing. It was built of our goodwill and pure intentions, and it had degenerated into a freak show on the news and a T-shirt business catering to the poseurs and wannabes, including a kid who purposefully referred to himself as Douche Bag.
I dropped off Grandma and her tickets and rushed home to Google the Unlikelies. There it was—an online store with hats, T-shirts, sweatshirts, bumper stickers, mouse pads. I forwarded it to everyone and sank into the chair in the corner with my Flopper and a stomach full of fury.
Gordie was right. He had said it was only a matter of time before the whole operation became convoluted. And now there was nothing any of us could do to stop it.
Early the next morning, I tiptoed to the basement to dig my leprechaun T-shirt out of the dirty laundry. I stopped in front of the family photo wall. Great-Grandma Sullivan watched, smiling her goofy toothless smile.
“Don’t judge,” I said out loud. “I need my damn shirt.”
I wondered what Great-Grandma Sullivan’s life would have been like if she had kept her feet but left the children to die. They weren’t her children. They weren’t even any relation to her. Would she still be smiling in that picture?
I picked up egg sandwiches and coffees and got to the duck pond in record time.
“Why do we continue to meet in a place that makes me uncomfortable?” Jean said. “Next time we’re meeting on a massive spiderweb, Val.”
“Great, Jean. Let’s do that,” Val said, patting the blanket she had laid out under a tree. Jean sat next to me. He had a fedora on and was clutching a duck-fighting baseball bat.
Gordie rolled in just after we finished our sandwiches and his.
“You ate my sandwich?” He looked wounded.
“Can I just say how irritated I am that a random kid from our school was wearing our avatar on his shirt, and some amoral asshole is profiting off our idea?” I said.
“Sadie, we’re all pissed. As soon as I saw the coverage all over the place, I knew it was coming. It’s bullshit,” Gordie said.
“Maybe we should just go public,” Val said. “We’ll call everyone out.”
Alice lifted her finger and held it in the air. “Under no circumstances will we ever go public.”
“So do we just let it go fully corrupt?” Jean said. “Like walk away?”
“We didn’t really have a grand plan to begin with,” Alice said. “We helped Greg O. with his website, dropped some care packages, and started anti-trolling on Val and Jean’s school slam page. That’s it.”
“Clearly it has evolved, Alice. Do we walk away or do we do something?” I didn’t know the answer. I just wanted to protect all the good things we started without the nonsense.
We lay back on the blanket and stared up at the tree branches, heavy with late-summer leaves. Nameless Puppy jumped on our stomachs and licked our faces. Finally, Val sat up and smiled her The wheels in my brilliant and abnormally productive mind are turning smile. “I’ve got it.”
We used up the rest of Jean’s sketchbook and half of another. We spent hours on the blanket in the middle of the duck pond park while the puppy chased away oblivious ducks and gutsy squirrels, bloated from the fruits of summer.
And
then we were finished. And we were exhausted.
“What do you think we would have done if all this hadn’t happened?” Gordie said as we walked to the cars.
Alice laughed and heaved her bag over her shoulder. “Been really friggin’ bored.”
Dad had chicken and corn on the grill when I got home. I was three days into vegetarianism so I ate the corn with a side of hummus and pita while Mom sneered and told me I was going to die of protein deficiency.
We settled into our chairs on the porch and watched the fireflies struggle to keep up with the hum of the cicadas. It smelled like fall.
After dinner, Dad and I took the ice cream truck over to Gordie’s for our special group date.
“Hey there, Mr. Valedictorian.” Dad was embarrassing.
Gordie jumped in the truck. “Woody, turn on the music. This is awesome.”
Dad turned on the music, and Keith and Zoe ran out of Gordie’s house.
“Woody! Woody!” Keith ran up to the window. “Wait, I have to get money.”
“No, you don’t, Keith. This one’s free. And I have a little surprise for you.” Dad opened the side door. Keith and Zoe climbed in front. And away we went. We picked up David and gave him a hat to match the new ones Dad had stuck on Keith’s and Zoe’s heads, and we drove all over the East End, playing the music, serving the customers, eating excessive amounts of ice cream.
Gordie and I sat on the floor in the back, facing each other, legs crossed, knees touching.
He licked his lips and that was all it took. I raised my eyebrows and ran my fingertips over his bare legs. He shook his head, and his eyes said, You can’t pull this shit in your dad’s ice cream truck.
“Last, but not least,” Keith called from the front.
“Last, but not least, buddy,” Dad said, pulling into Turtle Trail Recreation Center.
Dad did have the best job in the world.
Is it up yet? Alice texted. Gordie and I were in my stuffy room working on our secret project. Mom had pulled the I’m going to set some clean towels on your bed because I want to make sure you’re not having sex even though the door is open routine.
Yes. Just finished, Gordie texted.
He sat back in my chair in the corner. I lay on the bed playing with Flopper’s tail, feeling nervous and excited.
“Don’t judge,” I said when I caught Gordie staring at me. “Flopper’s gotten me through some rough times.”
Gordie had changed our avatar to a link. The link took people to a statement with the intentions of the founders of the original Unlikelies.
It was our manifesto.
We are the founders of the Unlikelies. We started this movement to disrupt the cyberbullies and high school assholes, the ones who make life much less enjoyable for the rest of us. Then we moved on to turning in the keepers of the underworld, the ones who get young people addicted and leave them for dead. And that was all good. Except that you all became fixated on trying to figure out WHO we were, and you ignored WHAT we stood for. And then we didn’t even know what we stood for.
So we had to pause and think. Pause and think, people.
Pause and think.
We stand for kindness. That sounds cliché. But we can’t help it. We stand for kindness. We believe in sticking up for people who are being mistreated online, in person, wherever. We believe in sticking up for people we don’t even know. And before you change your Facebook photo to our avatar or buy a T-shirt some asshat sold to make a quick buck, pause and think: What have YOU done today to stick up for someone? What have you done to stick up for yourself?
We stand for bravery. We need to step in and help our friends and classmates who are struggling with addiction and depression and all the things you may think you’re immune to. You’re not. We believe in being brave and speaking up and speaking out and turning in the traffickers, the dealers, the soul stealers.
And we stand for respect. Respect our planet. Yeah, it’s simple. But we all need to do better. Respect the person to your left. And your right. Respect yourself. Because you matter. And by the way, go, Ebenezer! You guys rock!
Do something noble. You’re one of us now.
—The Unlikelies
Gordie closed the laptop and motioned for me to sit with him in the chair.
“I wonder if any of this will rub off on our dysfunctional classmates,” I said.
“We’ll see soon enough.”
“Do you think we did it right?” I whispered as I lowered myself onto his lap.
“Well, you know what they say.” He smiled.
“What do they say?”
“If you see something, say something.”
“Good one, Mr. Pause and Think. Pause and think, people.”
Val: What now?
Jean: No clue.
Alice: Sleep until school starts?
Me: There’s a carnival tonight.
And that was where we went. We ate loads of cotton candy and bit the hard, glossy shells off the candied apples and smeared one another’s faces with the powdered sugar from the fried dough. We rode the Ferris wheel, over and over again, and tried to win giant stuffed animals but failed miserably, probably because the games were rigged. There were a few annoyingly long lines and two of the rides were broken and Alice found a long black hair in her raspberry slushie.
But other than that, it was amazing.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to send a lifetime supply of Woody’s ice cream to my editor, Lisa Yoskowitz, and my agent, Sara Crowe. You are my dream team and I will sing your praises to the ends of this earth. Giant, bottomless sundaes go to everyone at Little, Brown and Hodder, especially Lisa Moraleda and Jane Lee for your loveliness and professionalism.
A care package filled with gratitude goes to the following people for sharing professional wisdom and, in some cases, very personal anecdotes on everything from heroin addiction to police response scenarios: Dale Hernsdorf, Brian Preleski, Jared Shaw, and my husband, Michael Firestone (who definitely knows what a spleen is). And thank you to the Hamptons teens (especially K) who thoughtfully answered all my questions. Your musings on real-life issues shaped this book.
Mile-long candy necklaces go to the following people for your support: Callista DeGraw for being my first (and very special) teen reader (again); Laurie Uhlig, Alex G., Grace S., and Lisa Berman (for your fandom); my Barnes and Noble Canton buddies (for reminding me to walk so I don’t get a DVT); Jen O’Dea (for the sleepovers); The Pandas (for being the best critique group ever); my “Sweet Sixteen” and other author friends (for your commiseration and encouragement); and Denise Alfeld, Eleni DeGraw, and Wendy Avery (for being my other dream team).
If I found a suitcase full of diamonds, I would give it to you—Dad and Kay, Mom and Fred, Jen and Tim and Devin, and Lindsay and Andrew—not just because I love you guys, but because I know you would use it to do something noble. My family has taught me there are countless ways to give back, to do “good,” to fight lizards. Note: Val’s migrant school-supply program was modeled after my father Ray Lenarcic’s similar program, one of many he has created to make Herkimer County, New York, a better place.
Hugs and love to Lauren Firestone for giving Sadie her name, and to Emily Firestone for coming up with the original title. And thank you, Grandma P. and Pop Pop Firestone, for entertaining the girls in the Hamptons so I could work.
Michael Firestone, you deserve another thank-you for being far more wonderful than any love interest I could write. You are living proof that “instalove” is real. (And it’s spectacular.)
I had the opportunity to celebrate the Loose Ends List launch with my “lifetimers” in NYC and Little Falls, New York. Both events were snow globe moments I will never forget. Thank you, lifetime friends, for your loyal and essential presence in my life.
And finally, I experienced two unforgettable “seasons” many years ago. One took place during the summer of 1990 in an apartment overlooking Geneva, New York’s Seneca Lake. The other took place in 1994 at a Manhattan bar called Sullivan’s. Some of the people I hung out with during those “seasons” are dead. Some have disappeared. Some I talk to often. But they all remain with me. We shared the thrilling experience of being young and free and adventurous. Those unlikely friendships, however fleeting, have stayed with me. Those unlikely friendships inspired this book.
If you know someone struggling with addiction, you don’t have to go through it alone—talk to someone you trust and/or learn about available resources through organizations like drugfree.org. And if you’re looking to make an “unlikely” impact in your own community, volunteering with reputable nonprofits is a great place to start.
The Unlikelies Page 23
